So as I was reading Laymen’s Terms earlier this week and going ga-ga over all the great villainy in the script, I realized that I hadn’t yet breached the subject of villains in any extensive way on the site.  And there’s a reason for that.  I hadn’t developed an extensive enough take on the matter!  Which is strange, because I’m a huge proponent of having great villains in your screenplay. Audiences often like to root against the villain just as much as they like to root for the hero.  So if you’re only including a hero in your script, you’re depriving the audience of half the fun!  I don’t care if you’re writing a romantic comedy, an indie drama, or a period piece.  99% of the time, there better be a villain involved!

So who are some of the great villains in cinema history?  Well of course there’s Darth Vader, Buffalo Bill, Longshanks (Braveheart), Hans Gruber, Michael Myers, The Joker, Hannibal, Apollo, the T-1000.  There’s also Agent Smith (Matrix), Annie Wilkes (Misery), Drago, Mr. Potter (It’s A Wonderful Life), Tommy Devito (Joe Pesci – Goodfellas), Hans Landa (Inglorious Basterds), Anton Chigurh (No Country…), Max Cady (Cape Fear), Alex Forest (Fatal Attraction), John Doe (Seven), Alonzo Harris (Training Day) plus many many more.

Strangely enough, I’ve found that what works as villainy in one movie may not work in another.  Sometimes you need your villain to be calculated, other times you need him to be terrifying.  It all depends on the situaiton, the genre, and the type of story you’re telling. So before we go into what makes a good villain, let’s first identify the different kinds of villains.

The Nasty Villain – I’d say this is the most common villain of all.  If you want a villain that gets the audience all riled up with hatred, this villain is your pick.  They seem to be driven by an unseen evil force that will stop at nothing to destroy our hero. Annie Wilkes, Mr. Potter, Anton Chigurh, even the blond haired baddie in The Karate Kid.  These are bad bad guys.  However, these villains can backfire on if you if they’re too thin, and a lot of amateurs make this mistake.  They make the villains nasty just because they’re the bad guy in the story.  To combat this, make sure to add a solid motivation behind their actions.   Anton wants his money.  Annie is obsessed with Paul Sheldon’s books.  Mr. Potter wants every last piece of this town.  Even super-thin Karate Kid Blondie hates Daniel because he’s stolen his girl.  Your villain can be a really bad person.  Just make sure they have a little motivation behind their badness.

The Complicated Villain –  “Complicated” is usually code for a villain with some backstory.  I remember this gained popularity after the 80s Batman movies.  Tim Burton started showing the complicated histories behind why these baddies became bad.  All of a sudden, our villains obtained depth.  They had a past.  We could almost sympathize with them in a way.  This created a more complicated reaction to the character for the audience – shades of gray instead of straight black and white.  Max Cady from Cape Fear, for example, endured years of rape and degradation inside a prison because the man he’s now stalking put him there.  I’m not going to say I like Max Cady because of this, but I definitely understand him better.  The danger in writing this type of villain is that they become too sympathetic.   If we start sympathizing with the villain too much because of their troubled past, we don’t want to see them go down.  So be careful!

The Sorta Likable Villain – These villains are bad, but there’s also something alluring, interesting, or cool about them that makes us sort of like them.  Apollo Creed, Darth Vader, and Hannibal Lecter are all “Sorta Likable” villains.  I find that a lot of the time, sorta likable villains exist in a film where there’s a villain worse than them.  This allows us to root against someone while still kinda rooting for the cooler villain.  With Darth Vader in Star Wars, the real villain is Grand Moff Tarkin.  With Darth Vader in Empire and Jedi, the real villain is the Emperor.  In Lambs, Hannibal isn’t the top villain.  That title goes to Buffallo Bill.

The Comedic Villain – Seen only in comedies, these villains can be tough to get right.  They must be funny, but not so funny that they aren’t threatening.  I read a lot of comedy scripts where the villain is funny, but also such a goofball or so stupid that I don’t see them as a serious threat.  Therefore, you have to find that perfect balance.  Matt Dillon’s character in There’s Something About Mary is a great comedic villain.  Shooter McGavin in Happy Gilmore is a great comedic villain.  As much as I love Dumb and Dumber, those two villains were so bumbling that I was never scared of them, and that may have hurt the movie just a tad.  One of the most surefire traits to add to a comedic villain to ensure we’ll want to see them go down is arrogance.  Arrogance gets an audience riled up every time.  And it just seems to mix perfectly with comedy bad guys.

The Hidden Villain – Sometimes stories dictate, due to your bad guy being a mystery, that you not reveal your villain until the third act.  If you’re going to do this, you’re going to need an antagonistic force to challenge your hero in the meantime.  While an antogonist can be a villain, in these cases, they’re usually not.  Take The Fugitive for example.  (spoiler alert!) Dr. Charles Nichols is the surprise villain in the third act. But Tommy Lee Jones’ character is the antagonist for the first two acts.  It’s important that the hero always have an antagonist force pushing against him in the screenplay or else there’s no conflict.  Which is why a hidden villain can be a dangerous move.  However, if you substitute another antagonistic force in the meantime, you should be okay.

No Villain – I strongly discourage writing a script without a villain.  But if you’re going to do it, you better have a great antagonist pushing up against your character for the entire movie.  In most cases, if there is no villain in the script, the antagonist is nature.  Take Castaway for example.  That movie is villain-free.  But it has a strong antagonist – the island.  The Grey is another example.  The antagonist is the weather and the wolves. Those are the forces relentlessly pushing against our characters.  So sure, the no-villain approach can be done, but you better have some kick ass antagonistic nature if you’re going to pull it off.

Okay, we’ve identified the kind of villains in a script.  Now it’s time to determine what actually makes a good villain? Once again, not all of these things will work all of the time and certain combinations may work in some situations while not in others.  You have to assess what kind of story you’re telling and add the appropriate villainous traits.

Pompous – Like I mentioned above, a pompous character is a hated character.  There’s just something about people who are full of themselves that riles us up.  We NEED to see them go down.  Look at Apollo Creed in Rocky.  That man LOVED himself.  So we were dying to see Rocky beat him.

Stronger than our hero – This is a big one.  If a villain is weaker than our hero, we’ll have no doubt as to who will win in the end.  That’s bad.  What makes movies fun is when we think our hero has no shot because the villain is too strong.  Hans Gruber in Die Hard is the perfect example.  The man just oozes confidence and intelligence.  You really think he has his shit together, and that makes us seriously doubt if John McClane is going to win in the end.

Intelligent – This doesn’t ALWAYS have to be the case, particularly in comedies, but I love villains who can go toe-to-toe with our hero intellectually.  It creates the same effect as strength.  You always fear that they just might outthink our hero.  Prince Humperdink from The Princess Bride (who’s MAJORLY ARROGANT by the way) is actually a really smart guy.  He looks over the battleground after the Man In Black and Inigo Montoya’s sword fight and knows exactly how it went down and which direction the Man in Black went.  Smart villains are worthier villains.

Deceitful – Everybody hates deceitful people, people who go back on their promises.  Therefore this is a great trait to give your villain.  One of the scenes in Star Wars where our hatred for Grand Moth Tarken goes through the roof is when he asks Princess Leia where the Rebel Base is, promising he’ll spare her planet if she does.  She ends up telling him, and he goes ahead and blows the planet up anyway!  Or in Up.  Charles Muntz pretends to be all nice and friendly to our heroes.  Until his true colors come out later.  We hate deceitful people!

Emotionless – Sociopaths are REALLY SCARY.  Cold and collected, villains who feel no remorse for killing are as terrifying as it gets.  They just have that blank emotionless look on their faces?  Ugh, creeee-py!  Look no further than the flagship villain for this category, Anton Chigurgh in No Country For Old Men.  This dude is terrifying because he doesn’t have a single feeling bone in his body.  John Doe from Seven is another one.

Motivated – Most villains only work if they have a strong motivation behind their actions.  Take the T-1000 in Terminator 2 for example.  He’s been programmed to come here and eradicate John Connor in order to make sure the machines win the war in the future.  It’s a simple motivation, but it’s also dead solid.  We understand why he’s obsessed with killing John Connor at all costs.  You can certainly try writing an unmotivated villain, like The Joker in The Dark Knight, but be careful.  Villains who do bad shit just to do bad shit often confuse and frustrate the reader.  Also, it’s likely your villain won’t have 80 years of built-up audience awareness behind him to get an audience to go with it, such as the case is with The Joker.

Villain is strongest where hero is weakest – This is often tied into a hero’s fatal flaw, and therefore can be quite powerful if applied correctly.  The idea is that whatever your hero’s flaw is – whatever his biggest weakness is – make the villain extremely powerful in that area.  Take Luke Skywalker for example.  His flaw is that he doesn’t believe in himself.  Darth Vader, on the other hand, is the epitome of belief.  He’s the most confident motherf*cker in the galaxy (buoyed by his expertise in The Force).  Because Vader is so strong in the area that our hero struggles with the most, it creates a sense of doubt in whether Luke will be able to defeat him, and those situation tend to be the most compelling to watch.

Backstory – This is a choice.  You don’t have to do it.  But backstory adds depth to your villain, and readers/producers/agents tend to favor depth.  They want some info on why your bad guy turned into a bad guy.  Well, here’s my take on that.  I think what they really want is to know is something about your villain before the story began.  It doesn’t have to be WHY they became a bad person (i.e. daddy used to beat me when I was a kid), it can simply be fucked up pieces of that character’s past.  For example, the backstory we get on Hannibal is that he tore people’s faces off and used to be a therapist who preyed on his victims.  It doesn’t really tell us why he’s the way he is, but it adds depth to his character since we know more about him.  I will also say this about backstory.  Be careful about making your villain’s situation too sympathetic.  At a certain point, if we’re sympathizing with them too much, we don’t want to see them go down.  And we have to want to see the villain go down.

And there you have it!  My take on how to create a great villain.  However, like a lot of these articles, I feel like I’m only scratching the surface.  I know you guys have some thoughts of your own on how to create great villains, so throw’em at me.  If there’s anything really good, I’ll add it to the article! :)

Genre: Period
Premise: In a small town during the 1935 dust bowl, a former soldier must protect a fleeing city woman from a group of gangsters who want her dead.
About: I don’t know much about the writer, but this script made the Black List in 2008.  People have been describing it as the next Low Dweller (now titled “Into The Furnace.”) although I’ve been told it’s very “Desperate Hours’ish” as well.
Writer: Jeremy H. Bailey
Details: 110 pages (undated)

So there’re two things I’ve been going gaga about over the past month.  One is Gangnam Style and two is Desperate Hours.  Both are amazing and world-changing in their own way.  Now if there was some way to combine these two forces into one super-force…well gosh-darnit we might have the single greatest piece of entertainment in world history.  The only thing better than that mobster battle in Act 3 of Hours would be if Psy popped out and said…..LONG PAUSE…”Oppam Gangnam style!” and started doing the horsie dance.  And then the pelvic-thrusting elevator guy began doing his pelvic-thrusting elevator dance to ward off some of the mobsters.  I know if I were one of those mobsters, I’d run for my life.

What were we talking about again?  Oh yeah, a period piece.  Makes total sense that I’m including a South Korean pop star in this review then.  So the reason I picked this script today was because someone told me it was similar to Hours, but “EVEN BETTER.”  Well, since it took me over two years to crown a new number 1 script on my Top 25 list, I’m not sure how you can get any better than that, but I was willing to give it a shot.

And I quickly found out that it was, indeed, similar to Hours in many ways.  Both scripts start out in a really depressing era, with Layman’s beginning during the Dustbowl.  Don’t know what the Dustbowl is?  From my shaky history class memory, it was the time after we planted all our crops and didn’t consider how to keep the moisture intact (something about crop rotation?).  So all the land went dry, and that caused these huge dust storms to swirl around the country, making the problem even worse.  Basically, America went all North Korea farming, to stick with today’s theme.

This has caused the tiny Oklahoma town of Red Thistle to go near-broke.  The only one with any money is a not-very-nice man named Two Bills Calahan.  A fat bald sweaty pervert of a fellow, Two Bills understands the power he yields, and he makes sure he takes advantage of every ounce of it.  This guy is such a scumbag that he actually brings in a beautiful struggling farmer’s widow every day, Evelyn, and pays her for his sexual needs.  Evelyn, who has a sick daughter, is so desperate for money that she has no choice but to do it.

Staying with Evelyn, it turns out she lost her husband in the war, and got back his brother as the prize.  Crane McNamee has been shunned by the community since he left town when they needed him most, and has come back with his tail between his legs to take care of Evelyn now that she’s living alone with her daughter.  The two have a complicated relationship that revolves around her constantly being pissed off at him.

Their relationship is about to get even more complicated though as, during one of the many dust storms, Crane finds a crashed car on the side of the road with a passed out woman and a dead men inside  He schleps the woman, a city girl we’ll come to know as Cassidy, back to his house, not knowing that the men who were chasing her aren’t far behind.

These men, led by a really scary motherf*cker named Washington, head to the middle of Red Thistle and demand to know where this woman is.  They make a deal with Two Bill that whoever finds her first gets a reward, and that Two Bill gets half of it.  Never one to turn away money, Two Bill takes the fight to the people, encouraging them to look under ever rock, behind every loose board.  They MUST find this woman.  And the people, desperate for money, become a senseless mob in the process.

Naturally, word comes down that Crane is hiding her, and Washington’s crew, along with the town, go to claim their prize.  But Crane is not giving her up.  He’ll do anything, including becoming the killer he left in the past, to protect her.  An awkward four-pronged battle then ensues between Crane, Washington, Two Bill, and the town, which seems headed in one direction and one direction only: Disaster.

It’s hard to write this review without comparing Layman’s to Hours.  Had I read Layman’s first, I’m sure I would’ve rated it higher.  It’s still a very good script, but in the back of my head I was always saying, “Oooh, Hours did that better.”  The first thing that struck me was the time and place.  What I liked about Hours was that it was set at the end of all that depressing shit.  America had started to recover.  There was a sense of hope.  With Layman’s, it’s set in the heart of hopelessness.  The Dustbowl had made everyone as poor as dirt, and there didn’t seem to be any end to it.  It was super-damn depressing. Like, the complete opposite of watching the Gangnam Style video.

I was actually telling a friend about the script after I read it, and I realized after a few minutes what I was saying…”Dustbowl, dying daughter with pneumonia, mom who must prostitute herself to stay afloat, crippled main character, dead soldier brother” — and all of a sudden we both just started laughing at how depressing it all was.  And the thing is, it really isn’t as bad as it sounds, but yeah, the hopelessness definitely played a part in my reaction here.

I’ll tell you one area where Layman’s DID eclipse Hours, though, and that was in the villain department.  It has two really nasty villains, one in Two-Bill and the other in Washington.  These are just two really BAD dudes, each in their own way.  And like I always say, if you can develop a great villain, you will rope in the reader.  Because there’s nothing more fun than watching a villain you hate go down.

To me, that’s what sets this script apart.  I so wanted to see this pompous megalomaniac Washington get his ass handed to him by Crane.  But the thing is, it could’ve been even better.  Crane was an okay protagonist, but not nearly as good as Frank from Hours.  With Frank, his situation was always clear.  He’d lost his family to the Spanish flu and he was still in love with the woman he left when he was young, only to come back and find out she’d married another man.  With Crane, there was something about how he could’ve saved his brother in the war but didn’t.  Maybe??  I wasn’t sure.  I could also never figure out what his relationship was with Evelyn.  Was he just a caretaker or was there more there?  She seemed to hate him.  But at the end she says she always loved him.  Loved him as a family member or like “in love” with him?  I couldn’t figure that out.  And it drives me batty when main characters’ intentions and motivations and their situations are unclear.  I just couldn’t get a handle on Crane.

The ending, also, was a little confusing.  At a certain point (spoiler) Cassidy tells Crane she came here for him?  But wait?  Why did she wait until the very end to tell him that?  Did she not know who he was yet?  I’m not sure.  It was one of those situations where it felt like the writer was so set on the twist, that he was going to force it in there through hell or high water, regardless of if it was clear or not.  I’m not upset about it.  Let’s face it: WE’VE ALL BEEN THERE.  But still, that third act definitely could’ve used another draft or two.

But boy oh boy, those villains.  They really kept me around wanting to know what happened.  They were so strong, in fact, and so fun to watch, that they pumped this script up to a double worth-the-read.  Them and that damn rain-maker, who was a stroke of atmospheric genius!

What I learned: Today’s “what I learned” came out of nowhere.  I realized that having two villains go toe-to-toe is a guaranteed great scene!  My favorite scene in the script is when Washington and his gang interrupt a church sermon to confront our other villain, Two Bills, to ask where their girl is.  There’s something about seeing two evil factions who we’ve met individually square off against each other that’s fascinating.  I just couldn’t wait to see who was going to bend first.  This is a cool tip to remember.

Genre: Horror/Procedural
Premise: An allegedly rehabilitated Dr. Jekyll is pulled out of prison to help hunt a new monster who seems to be using an improved version of the Hyde serum.
About: “Hyde” made the 2010 Black List.  While writing Hyde, screenwriter Cole Haddon concurrently wrote the story in graphic novel form for Dark Horse.  That novel is titled “The Strange Case Of Mr. Hyde” and is available on Amazon.  
Writer: Cole Haddon
Details: 114 pages (8-06-10 draft) This is the first draft (the one that made the Black List).

I’m still kind of geeking out after meeting Eddie O’Keefe last night, one half of the writing team of When The Streetlights Go On.  These guys just ignore ALL RULES.  The draft of theirs that made the Black List?  That script was written in SIX WEEKS.  Oh, and did I mention it was their FIRST SCREENPLAY.  Wowzers – that goes against everything history has dictated regarding first scripts.

Eddie talked about how he and his partner, Chris, don’t focus too much on structure, but rather come up with this huge playlist of songs that they feel is appropriate for the material, and just let the music guide their writing and their choices.  Again, this is sooooo NOT the way I’d recommend anyone doing it.  Because believe me, I’ve read stuff from writers who’ve written that way before, and it is NEVER GOOD.  So to see these guys use such an undefined unstructured approach so effectively is both scary and inspiring.

With that said, they DID read all the screenwriting books before they wrote the script.  They do understand things like active characters and act breaks and all that.  So they did have that in the back of their mind when they were writing.  They’ve also written lots of short stories and both attended film school – so it wasn’t like they were going into this screenwriting thing completely unprepared.  Still, I love how that approach works for them, because it’s what makes their work so unique and unpredictable.  Oh, and he told me that in addition to Streetlights and Broadcast, the two have written a script that he feels is EASILY their best work.  It’s just not very well known.  Eddie says he’s going to send that to me and I cannot wait!

What does this have to do with today’s script?  NOTHING!  I just wanted to get my geekery on and this felt like the right place to do it.  However, Eddie and Chris did not write today’s script.  So let’s move away from formless writing to something a little more structured, and surprisingly good!

So as you probably know, back in the day, there was this doctor named Henry Jeckyll.  Dude liked to experiment.  And dangit if he wasn’t such a believer in his work that he’d experiment on himself!  That didn’t turn out so hot, though, since one of his experiments turned him into a monster, a monster who crawled through 1880s London looking for people to mutilate. Eventually, the coppers caught up with him and killed his ass, and the world was forever better.

Or was it?

Five years later, a rash of prostitute killings have started up again, and the crime scenes look like something out of a superhero film.  20 some feet between fleeing footsteps. Blood trails halfway up the sides of buildings.  Whoever’s pulling off these killings is superhuman.

But who could it be?  Hyde was killed five years ago.  At least that’s what everyone was told.  Our resident inspector on the case, the off-putting Thomas Adye, learns that Hyde, in fact, wasn’t killed.  Why would you kill something with that much power when you could study it instead (Paul Riser from Aliens would be proud!)?  So the dual personalities of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde have been kept underground in the interim, locked up in a Hannibal Lector-like cage that only an unprivileged few have access to.  Adye is tasked with going to talk with Dr. Jeckyll to see if he can get a beat on who this monster is and where it might be.

The two don’t hit it off AT ALL and Adye leaves hoping he’ll never never have to see Jeckyll again.  But when he runs into the murderer who shrugs off a few bullets like he’s being tickled by duck feathers, he realizes he’s in way over his head.  If he’s going to take this killer down, he will need the help of the man he despises the most, his underground cell buddy, Dr. Jeckyll.

Away the two go, into the streets, pounding the pavement, talking to anyone who might know who this killer is.  Of course, the scum of the underground don’t like to talk to cops, so it’s hard-going wherever they turn, especially with the mischievous Jeckyll delighting in every little misstep Adye takes.

After a couple of false-positives, the duo finally find out who they’re dealing with (spoiler).  In case you haven’t figured it out yet – yup – our “psycho killer” is none-other than Jack The Ripper.  Yikes.  As if we didn’t have enough problems.  And since Mr. Ripper also seems to have gotten his hands on Dr. Jeckyll’s serum, he’s basically like a serial killing nuclear bomb!

So our mismatched couple will need to put aside their differences to catch the killer before he continues his run.  But it’s starting to look like the only way they’re going to stop him, is if they use some of that infamous serum themselves…

Duh duh duh duhhhhhhh…..

I’m not really a fan of these outdated public domain monsters. I know there’s a reason some of this stuff stands the test of time, but to me I’m always thinking, “Ehhh, isn’t a hundred years enough? Shouldn’t we, maybe, try to come up with new monsters and new stories?”  I know saying such words could get me blackballed from Hollywood, but seriously – let’s create something new, not rekindle something old!

With that said, this is about as good of a job as you can do with this kind of story.  The atmospheric writing (I love the way Haddon describes Jeckyll’s face as “UNEXPECTEDLY HANDSOME, startlingly so…” when it first slams into his jail cell bars, his features clear for the first time after being hidden in shadows the entire scene) and forward-moving story kept things fun throughout.  In these procedurals – these “chase the killer” scripts – it’s all about pushing the story forward, keeping the momentum going, and I thought Haddon did that brilliantly.  There’s never a moment where we’re just sitting around discussing shit.  We’re always AFTER THE KILLER.

The real star of the script though was the relationship between the straight-laced Adye and the mischievous Jeckyll.  This updated (or backdated) take on the buddy-cop dynamic was, dare I say, scrumptious.  It was hilarious to watch Adye obsessed and freaked out by every little detail, contrasted with Jeckyll, who was just thrilled to be out of his cell for a few days.  This was one big field trip for him, and dammit if he wasn’t going to play on everything before the whistle to go back inside blew (God I hated that whistle!).

I (spoiler) thought bringing Jack The Ripper into the mix was also clever, as was giving him access to Jeckyll’s serum, making him super-human.  I mean what’s scarier than a monster version of Jack The Ripper??  Maybe the only thing I was worried about was that this felt a teensy bit similar to the abomination known as Van Helsing. I hope if they make this, they don’t “kids family” it up but stick with the darker more intense approach.  That will definitely hurt opening day grosses, but it will pay off for the film in the long run.

Honestly, the only reason I didn’t rate this higher was because it’s not my thing.  But for what it is, it’s pretty damn enjoyable.

What I learned: A common screenwriting debate is whether you should write dialogue “properly” or if you should add accents and speech imperfections.  Take for instance this line on page 12 from Chief Inspector Newcomen: “Stay away from Hyde, Inspector. ‘E’s like a poison that keeps working at you. A poison, just ask ‘is mate Utterson.”  The way I see it is is this – you can add speech imperfections as long as you don’t overdo it.  As soon as I have to WORK to get through all the accents and deliberate misspellings, I get pissed at the writer, because a reader should never have to work.  So use it sparingly if you REALLY NEED TO, but don’t slaughter your dialogue with it.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Desperate Hours.  One of the defining indicators of a great script is that, afterwards, you feel like you’ve already seen the movie.  The writing is so powerful, so descriptive, that all the images are already in your head.  The mobsters coming out of the train with their tommy guns.  The Lone Stranger whistling as he walks through town.  That final image when the Stranger and the girl finally meet…and what happens next.  I can’t get that moment out of my head.  SO GREAT!  Anyway, all this got me thinking how rarely I give a script a genius rating. So I thought I’d write an article on what, in my eyes, makes a script “genius.”  A mastery of the craft is a necessity, of course.  But what about the details?  What should one be focused on to construct one of these bad boys?  That question has me jazzed, so I’ve put together a genius script “short list.”  You do the things I’ve listed below and you will maximize your chances of reaching genius status!

CHARACTERS
It all starts with your characters.  Duh, right?  How many times have you heard that before?  Well Desperate Hours shows us WHY character is so important. Not only must your characters be compelling enough for us to root for the good guys and be intrigued by the bad guys, they must also exhibit a history, something that indicates the character has lived an entire life before they ever made it into this story.  Oh, and to make matters worse, that history must be integrated seamlessly.  This is where the pros separate themselves from the amateurs.  They can convey a ton of history in a character without bringing the story to a dead stop.  The only way amateurs know how to do backstory is via flashbacks. These pace-killers almost always destroy your story on the spot.  You’d much rather convey backstory in the present, keeping the story moving in the process.  That’s hard.  So how do you do it?

Well, there are a few ways, but one of the most popular is through the relationships in your story.  Create a past between two characters and you’ve instantly created a backstory!  Look at how easy that was!  This is an area where Desperate Hours really excels.  Every relationship has a backstory.  Frank and Sue were once in love, but he left for the war and she went and married George instead.  George has always known that his wife still holds a flame for Frank, which creates a backstory between he and Frank as well.  This history plays into every conversation that occurs between these three, which laces the dialogue with subtext and conflict.  And those are the things that make scenes compelling, interesting, and intense.  Because there are so many characters in Desperate Hours with juicy meaty backstories, almost all of the scenes are like this, laced with history and tension and conflict.

Backstory is not the only thing you have to worry about with character, though.  You’ve probably heard from agents and producers and other screenwriters that your characters must exhibit three dimensions.  Except nobody really talks about what that means.  Well, we just dealt with one dimension – an overarching backstory.  Dimension 2 is an unresolved issue from the past (the most specific/important piece of your character’s backstory).  And dimension 3 is a fatal flaw.  If we take Frank from Desperate Hours, his unresolved issue from the past is not being able to save his family.  He tried.  He couldn’t do it.  And he’s always felt guilty and conflicted because of it.  Therefore he must save this girl in order to resolve his past.  Dimension 3, his fatal flaw, is his stubbornness.  Frank refuses to back down, no matter how ridiculous the odds are, no matter how much logic tells him otherwise.  He will do it his way til the very end.  There are other dimensions you can add to a character, but these three are ultra-important and give your character the most bang for your buck.

STRUCTURE
Besides structure providing a foundation for your story, which is its primary purpose, I’ve found that a great structure also creates three distinct and unique acts.  All three acts work together, of course, but each also works on its own, almost as its own individual movie.  The advantage of doing this is that the story constantly changes and evolves, keeping things fresh.  Bad scripts usually rehash the same act or sequence over and over again, creating a dull predictable script in the process.  In Desperate Hours, the first act is about a man reconnecting with the town he left behind after losing his family. It’s not that exciting, but the characters are so well set-up, that we’re willing to follow them to see where the story goes.  The second act, then, becomes about the mystery, a completely different storyline from the first act.  Who is this woman?  Who shot her?  Why was she shot?  Is she going to live?  We want to know.  The third act is, of course, the mobster invasion.  It’s a natural extension of what’s happened so far, and yet it’s completely different from everything we’ve seen so far.  This is not the only way to write a script, of course, but it’s something Desperate Hours did so well, I couldn’t help but think the approach should be used more often.  Anything that evolves your story, as opposed to stagnates it, is good for your screenplay!

INSPIRING CHOICES
This is an oft-forgotten X-Factor in a script.  You can have solid characters.  You can have a great mystery.  But if you don’t make consistent inspiring original choices that the reader isn’t expecting, it doesn’t matter.  It’s times like this when I realize how difficult screenwriting is.  Nailing the characters is fucking HARD.  98% of screenplays don’t do it.  But let’s say you’re one of the fortunate 2% and get past that hurdle.  You then have to nail the structure, with the story evolving through each subsequent act, staying fresh and fast-moving, never hitting any lulls.  That’s not easy to do either!  But let’s say you somehow get past THOSE TWO hurdles, you now have to make sure that each and every choice you make feels fresh.  With every choice in history already being done before, this part of screenwriting requires a particular kind of patience, a ton of trial and error and a willingness to admit when a choice isn’t working so you can go back to the drawing board and come up with something better.  Stuff like the Model-T Ford showing up in the river in Desperate Hours.  Great choice.  The surprise (spoiler) that the female witness was nothing but a prostitute.  Great choice.  Having the single mobster stroll into town before the attack.  Great choice.  Remember, even if you have all the screenwriting book stuff in place, it still comes down to your imagination, your creativity, and your fortitude.  How long are you willing to toil through choices until you come up with the perfect one, for every single choice in your screenplay!

BUILD
Great scripts build.  Too many writers don’t know how to do this, and as a result, their scripts stagnate in the second act.  Things continue to push forward, but the push happens on a horizontal plane instead of a vertical one.  To build your story, you must think vertically.  Think of your second act as a game of Jenga.  You must keep adding pieces to the top until everything dangles on a precarious foundation.  If even one piece is misplaced, the entire thing comes crashing down.  Try to do this with every aspect of your second act.  In Desperate Hours, instead of keeping the conflict local b/t Tom and George and Sue and Frank, Mariani uses his second act to bring the rest of the town in.  So now we’ve gone from the fates of four, to the fate of everybody.  This is called “upping the stakes,” and it has the added benefit of building the story, making everything bigger and badder.  If things aren’t getting bigger and badder, with more on the line, more people involved, more elements affected, then you’re not building.  So many scripts die because the writers don’t properly build their story.  Genius scripts masterfully build their story from the beginning of the second act all the way to the climax.

CHARACTER-RELATED SUBPLOTS MUST BE INTERESTING
Here’s the thing – plot is important.  You need things happening in your story to keep the audience’s interest.  For example, when Frank and Tom go up into the mountains and find the dead Federal agents, that’s a plot point that’s needed to keep the story interesting/moving.  However, you can’t just depend on plot.  If the only thing keeping your story interesting is plot points, the audience will start to detach themselves.  Why?  Because audiences need a connection with people to stay interested in a story over an extended period of time.  In other words, they need to feel connected with your characters.  And this is done through character-related subplots. You’ll often bounce back and forth between plot point and character subplot.  If these subplots aren’t just as compelling/intriguing/fascinating as your main plot, you’ll lose the reader.  To achieve a great character subplot, the main relationship in each subplot must have its own hot-button issue between the characters that must be resolved.  In Desperate Hours, we have Frank and Sue.  Their issue is that they still love each other, but can’t be together (as well as a secondary issue of “Why did he leave her?”).  We’re drawn to this subplot because we want to see how that’s going to be resolved.  Then you have Frank and George.  Their issue is Frank’s building anger towards George due to him abusing Sue.  Again, there’s so much tension between the two due to this, that we absolutely have to see how the relationship will resolve itself.  So to summarize, create a dominant issue between two characters and explore these conflict-filled relationship subplots in the downtime between plot points.

I’ll be honest with you.  A lot of what I’ve listed above is kind of advanced screenwriting shit.  It isn’t easy to pull off.  I mean, I’m assuming you’ve already mastered the basic stuff, like knowing where to break your acts, how to arc your characters, which backstory should be included and which shouldn’t, that sort of thing.  But if you’re wondering about the kind of stuff a genius script contains, this is it!  Complex three-dimensional characters, an ever-changing story, a sense of building, inspiring choices, strong subplots.  So get back to your scripts, folks.  I don’t review nearly enough genius scripts on this site.  I need more.  And I know at least one of you is going to write one. :)

Genre: Period
Premise: A small town crippled by WWI and the Spanish flu finds itself facing major moral questions and a brutal invading force when a young girl shows up on a rancher’s doorstep covered in blood.
About: I don’t know much about this project or this writer.  If it’s the same Mariani listed on IMDB, he’s  a guy who’s making a bunch of shorts in whatever capacity he can, grip, sound, director.  Would be pretty amazing if he just came out of nowhere. (edit) More information coming in.  This is set up at Johnny Depp’s production company.  Hmm, that could be bad.  Since Depp has a million projects, this could be stuck in purgatory until whenever he gets around to it. :(
Writer: E. Nicholas Mariani
Details: 120 pages (Sept 13, 2011 draft)

As you may know, genius scripts don’t come around very often on Scriptshadow.  In fact, there’s an ongoing joke that I’ve never even given a genius rating.  Not true.  I gave the original Source Code draft that made the Black List a genius rating.

But it’s been so long that, I admit, I was wondering if I’d ever rate a script “genius” again.  In fact, I was thinking of replacing the rating when the new site is launched.

But then days like this come along and…well, they give me hope not just about the industry, but about art in general.  They let me know that there are writers out there who pour every ounce of heart and soul into their work and who have been at this long enough that that heart and soul amount to something.  That’s the thing – a lot of us have heart and soul.  A lot of us channel that into our work.  We just haven’t learned the craft well enough to channel it in the right way.  That takes time.  It takes dedication.  I don’t know Mariani’s story.  But I’m guessing he’s been at this for awhile.  You don’t write a script like Desperate Hours by accident.

So what makes a script genius?  That’s tough to say.  I think a mastery of the craft is one.  There are no technical mistakes in the work.  An understanding of how to explore characters, which Mariani is fan-fucking-tastic at.  Inspired choices (as opposed to boring and obvious ones – which is what I usually see).  And then that x-factor, that way you connect with the reader on an emotional level.  That last part is the tough one, because what inspires me emotionally may not inspire you emotionally.

The year is 1918.  Don’t know much about 1918?  Let me give you some background.  The Spanish Flu had just gone about killing 50 million people worldwide, over half a million in America alone.  And if that wasn’t bad enough, World War 1 had obliterated nearly every able-bodied man in America. America’d been stomped on, ground up, and spit out by God, and was just starting the healing process. It was fucking bad.

Enter Frank Sullivan, a man who’s felt the worst of it.  Frank lost his wife and his two children to the flu, and hasn’t gone back into the world since.  He lives out on his ranch, miles away from town, and if he has his way, he’ll die without ever coming in contact with another human being again.

But, you see, the world is changing.  Hope is slowly creeping back into people’s daily lives, and Sullivan’s best friend, Tom, who’s both the sheriff and the mayor (hey, you gotta improvise when 1 out of every 4 people around you drops dead) convinces him to come join the town for a little celebration that night.

It’s there where we meet Doctor Sue Fowler (a title she’s received, like many others in town, via extenuating circumstances), a woman who Sullivan has all sorts of history with.  The two were going to get married until Sullivan ran off to join Theodore Roosevelt’s famed “Rough Riders,” and fight for his country instead.  Sue was then forced to marry her second choice, a drunken abusive man named George, who she’s been stuck with ever since.

The two are absolutely still in love, but there’s nothing they can do about it, so all they can do is stare forelornly into one another’s eyes and wish things would’ve ended up differently.

However, their time together is about to get a lot more intimate, as that night, when Sullivan gets home, he finds that a woman who’s been shot to pieces has stumbled into and passed out in his house.  Sullivan races back to town, gets Sue, and the two do everything in their power to save the girl, a task that will be limited due to her near-death status and turn-of-the-century medicine.  However, the woman *is* holding on, just barely, and that means there’s hope of finding out what she’s doing here.

The next day, Sullivan and Tom follow the woman’s trail back to the hills, and find a brand new model-T Ford crashed into the river with two dead Federal agents inside.  When news hits town that a huge mobster trial is going on in Kansas City, everyone slowly puts the pieces together.  The woman is the star witness, and the mob is willing to do anything to put her out of commission.

And this is where things get interesting.  You see, it doesn’t take long for the mob to figure out the woman is still alive.  And that means they’ll be sending more people down to take care of her.  But what does the town do about this?  This isn’t their problem.  They don’t know this woman.  They just got done losing half their population to war and disease.  Things are finally starting to look up again.  Why get involved in more death, in more danger, when they don’t have to?  Let the mob have this girl and everyone can be on their merry way.

Except that’s not what Sullivan believes in.  You don’t abandon someone in need.  You don’t sacrifice someone who can’t fight for themselves.  Frank is one of the few people left on this planet who stands for something.  He believes in sticking your neck out and having your neighbor’s back.  Hell, he was part of the Rough Riders, the toughest crew in America.  Not to mention his own personal reason.  Frank watched helplessly as his family died one after another, unable to do anything.  He couldn’t save them.  But he can save this girl.

And this leads to one of the best third acts I’ve ever read or seen in my life.  Please for the love of everything, make this movie, because this third act is going to go down in fucking cinema lore.  When the mob strolls into that town, and Sullivan prepares for a showdown of him vs. them, I don’t remember ever being as electrified as I was in that moment.  I was just fucking CHARGED.  I’m not going to spoil everything that happens but I’ll just leave it at this: FUCKING AWESOME.

I suppose I should go into what works here, but I can never really do that with a script I fall in love with.  Basically, the script uses its first act to establish and make you fall in love with its characters, its second act to build the mystery of who the girl is, and it’s third act for the big showdown.  So yeah, in that sense, it’s perfectly freaking structured.

I suppose one can make the argument that the first act is slow, but I don’t know, I fell in love with the characters so much that I didn’t care that the story wasn’t emerging at warp speed.  I loved how Mariani established the setting.  That was so key – letting us know where America was at the moment, with everyone having lost someone, and then how that directly affected our main character.  Who doesn’t sympathize with someone who’s experienced such a terrible loss?  I was onboard with Sullivan from the moment I met him.

Then, when the mysterious girl shows up, it just gets better and better.  We have a mystery driving the story now – and an intriguing one.  Where did she come from?  Why was she shot at?  When we pull that car out of the river, I got goosebumps.  “Whoa,” I thought, “This is getting really good.”

And while this was happening, I couldn’t help but notice the amount of research and detail that went into everything.  There’s this throwaway moment early in the script, in town, where a group of old Civil War veterans marches down main street singing a solemn tune about their own war experience, and I just thought, “Who the hell thinks of that??”  That only comes from a writer who has just so immersed himself in that world, who knows 1918 so well, he might as well have grown up there.  Which is SO RARE in scripts I read, that a writer knows that much about what he’s writing about, which is one of the many reasons why Desperate Hours is so great.

Anyway, the script reaches the midpoint with this amazing dual thrust going on.  On the one hand you have the slow and steady buildup of the approaching mob.  It’s clear the town is in WAY over their heads with these guys, who are gradually cutting off all communication so the town can’t call for help.  And then you just have this amazing fucking character work, with each and every character having a backstory and a flaw they have to resolve before the end of the script.

Seeing Sullivan’s issues with George (Sue’s husband) play out — I can’t remember a more compelling character conflict.  I mean it’s just so layered and freaking INTENSE!  But it’s not just him.  It’s Tom, it’s the guy who brought the flu back to town, its the cowards versus the brave.  And that’s another thing!  Like we were talking about a few weeks ago – this script has a clear theme: FEAR.  The levels of it.  How we all back down.  How we’re all afraid.  But how there’s a time when you have to say enough is enough.  And how that moment is different for everyone.

AHHH!  This script is just so fucking good!

But when it really all comes together is the scene where THE STRANGER finally appears from a lone train, whistling through the town at night, a man who, we know, has come looking for this girl, and how he strolls into the bar, the most arrogant fearless mf’er in the world, and how he meets up with the only person on the planet who isn’t afraid of him.  This is one of the BEST SCENES I’VE EVER FREAKING READ!  When Sullivan tells The Stranger to “hold on” so he can go pummel the shit out of George, before coming back and telling The Stranger to “continue,” I was just…I was speechless.  And when the stranger walks back to the train, whistling the whole time, then finally STOPS, intitiating “the signal,” and we get one of the coolest fucking images we will ever see in movie history…I kind of thought I’d stumbled my way into script heaven.

I realize that at this point I’m a bumbling moron and not very helpful but this is what a great script does to me.  And by great, I mean REALLY GREAT.  As in going straight to the top of my Top 25 – and I mean WITHOUT QUESTION.  NUMBER 1!

This script….wow.  I mean…wow.  I don’t have words.  Whoever has this, please make it now.  You’re sitting on a dozen Oscars.

What I learned 1: SETTING in period pieces.  Establish it!  This script doesn’t work unless we get the opening title cards explaining that the flu and WW1 have obliterated America.  The town’s reluctance to engage the mob is a direct result of that, so without that knowledge, the script would’ve lost a ton.  Too many writers write period pieces without establishing what was happening at the time, and we need that context if we’re to understand and enjoy the story.

What I learned 2: Loss creates sympathy.  A main character losing someone makes us root for them.  Sullivan has lost THREE PEOPLE he loved more than anything.  So we care IMMENSELY for him right away.

What I learned 3: LIVE IN YOUR SCENES.  You can’t get the most out of your scenes unless you place yourself in them, unless you look into your characters eyes, notice the detail in the surrounding elements, breathe the air, listen to the sounds.  Immerse yourself in your scenes to find those little nooks and crannies that amateur writers ignore.  Detail is EVERYTHING.  It’s what makes your scene and story specific, unique.  There’s a great scene in Desperate Hours where Sullivan comes into town for the party riding his horse.  Times have changed though.  Everyone else has moved onto cars.  And Sullivan looks like an ancient has-been for tying his animal up next to these shiny metal technological beasts.  However, when a storm comes through later in the night, it’s Sullivan who looks like the smart one.  The cars are spinning their wheels, twisting around in the mud, whereas he casually hops up on his horse and gallops away.  I just don’t think you imagine a scene like that, with those cars digging their own graves, unless you place yourself down there in the mud, see the texture, taste it, realize that a 1918 Model T Ford probably isn’t going to be able to maneuver through mud that easily.

What I learned 4: ALWAYS KEEP YOUR MAIN SOURCE OF CONFLICT NEARBY – When Sullivan and Sue are nursing the girl back to health, Mariani doesn’t leave them alone there for long.  He gets George (Sue’s husband) over to the house and puts him there with them, causing all sorts of weird energy and tension.  Way more interesteing than giving Sue and Sullivan and unimpeded path back to a relationship.